Question

What is a stop codon and what does it do?

Answer 1

Codon :

1. It is a triplet nucleotide base that codes for an amino acid during translation.
2. One codon codes for a specific amino acid.
3. Some codons code for more than one amino acid so-called degenerate codons
4. The mRNA reads a codon that is contiguous without any punctuation or gaps.
5. There are 61 codons that encode for 20 amino acids and 3 codons do not code for any amino acid

Stop codon :

1. A codon that does not code for any amino acid is called a stop codon.
2. A stop codon stops or halts the process of protein synthesis (translation)in the cell.
3. There are three stop codons(UAA, UAG, UGA) that do not code for any amino acid.